Downgrading the Male - from Gender Discrimination to Gender War?
Filelefteros has never made a secret of his gender: male. But reading the Sunday, November 19, 2006 edition of the "NZZ am Sonntag", the author of this blog has become aware of a conflict that may become one of the most virulent subjects of disussion soon.
To cite only a selection olf subjects treated in the Swiss sunday newspaper:

1. The question why a male leopard killed his longtime female partner in a surprise
attack at the "Dählhölzli" zoo of Swiss federal capital Berne















2. a discussion on the role of a surplus of men in a population in violent behaviour (e.g. in the Palestinian territories)

3. An analysis of the recent case of repeated gang rape of a 13 year old school girl by a group of at least 12 school boys aged 15 to 18 in Zurich, videotaped by one of the presumed aggressants on a cellular phone. One of the key elements brought forward in the analysis: at high school level, male youths tend to be outperformed by girls who are better motivated to sit down, to learn and to comply with educational demands and objectives, while their male classmates see their perspective for the future dwindling and tend to recur to violent behaviour which is enhanced by peer group pressure

4. The proposal of a parliamentary committee for a fundamental change in Swiss federal legislation on family names which would permit the choice of a child's name exclusively to the mother if no agreement was reached by both parents

5. The fact that in the person of Ségolène Royal, a female candidate for the presidency was nominated for the first time in the history of the "République Française", amidst acid remarks by defeated male contenders like former ministers Jack Lang, Laurent Fabius and Dominique Strauss-Kahn, and to the apparent irritation of Royal's partner and father of her 4 children, Socialist party chief François Hollande.






But even more symptomatic perhaps is the fact that this nomination earned the immediate cordial applause of Swiss socialist party chief Hans Jürg Fehr and harsh critique by the (male) chief of Swiss socialist youth organization.

The central questions that arises from such subjects are the following: is the gender balance of our society, instead of following it's course of elimination of gender discrimination, shifting from authoritarian male dominated structures to towards another, female domination? Are policy makers and legislators aware of the impact of a fundamental swing in gender relations? Will males be able to adapt to this swing? Will males become more violence-prone in such a process? What will be the role of religious communities in the process?

One thing is clear: the election of a female president in France would represent a major step away from the institutional discrimination against women that had started with the French Revolution, as documented by the suppression of the movement of Olympe de Gouges (1748-1793)- cf. Textes fondateurs des droits humains - and ended a period of relative freedom of (upper class) women during the age of enlightenment les Femmes de l'Ancien Régime>
and never ended throughout the 19th century despite pictorial documents telling another story


Eugène Delacroix (1798-1863): La liberté guidant le peuple, 1830. Paris, Musée du Louvre

There is a fine line between gender discrimination and equal rights.The challenge which our society faces is to be aware of that line.